You want to use BeagleBone Black as a desktop computer with keyboard, mouse, and an HDMI display.

The Bone comes with USB and a microHDMI output. All you need to do is connect your keyboard, mouse, and HDMI display to it.

To make this recipe, you will need:

The adapter looks something like Female HDMI-to-male microHDMI adapter.

Plug the small end into the microHDMI input on the Bone and plug your HDMI cable into the other end of the adapter and your monitor. If nothing displays on your Bone, reboot.

If nothing appears after the reboot, edit the /boot/uEnv.txt file. Search for the line containing +disable_uboot_overlay_video=1 and make sure it’s commented out:

Then reboot.

The Bone has only one USB port, so you will need to get either a keyboard with a USB hub or a USB hub. Plug the USB hub into the Bone and then plug your keyboard and mouse in to the hub. You now have a Beagle workstation; no host computer is needed.

This recipe disables the HDMI audio, which allows the Bone to try other resolutions. If this fails, see BeagleBoneBlack HDMI for how to force the Bone’s resolution to match your monitor.

You want to connect to the command shell of a remote Bone from your host computer.

[basics_vsc_IDE] shows how to run shell commands in the Visual Studio Code bash tab. However, the Bone has Secure Shell (SSH) enabled right out of the box, so you can easily connect by using the following command to log in as user debian, (note the $ at the end of the prompt):

debian has the default password tempped It’s best to change the password:

You want to connect to the command shell of a remote Bone from your host computer without using SSH.

Sometimes, you can’t connect to the Bone via SSH, but you have a network working over USB to the Bone. There is a way to access the command line to fix things without requiring extra hardware. (Viewing and Debugging the Kernel and u-boot Messages at Boot Time shows a way that works even if you don’t have a network working over USB, but it requires a special serial-to-USB cable.)

First, check to ensure that the serial port is there. On the host computer, run the following command:

/dev/ttyACM0 is a serial port on your host computer that the Bone creates when it boots up. The letters crw-rw---- show that you can’t access it as a normal user. However, you can access it if you are part of dialout group. See if you are in the dialout group:

Looks like I’m already in the group, but if you aren’t, just add yourself to the group:

You have to run adduser only once. Your host computer will remember the next time you boot up. Now, install and run the screen command:

The /dev/ttyACM0 parameter specifies which serial port to connect to, and 115200 tells the speed of the connection. In this case, it’s 115,200 bits per second.

You want to see the messages that are logged by BeagleBone Black as it comes to life.

There is no network in place when the Bone first boots up, so Getting to the Command Shell via SSH and Getting to the Command Shell via the Virtual Serial Port won’t work. This recipe uses some extra hardware (FTDI cable) to attach to the Bone’s console serial port.

To make this recipe, you will need:

Look for a small triangle at the end of the FTDI cable (FTDI connector). It’s often connected to the black wire.

Next, look for the FTDI pins of the Bone (labeled J1 on the Bone), shown in FTDI pins for the FTDI connector. They are next to the P9 header and begin near pin 20. There is a white dot near P9_20.

Plug the FTDI connector into the FTDI pins, being sure to connect the triangle pin on the connector to the white dot pin of the FTDI connector.

Now, run the following commands on your host computer:

You are logged in to your Bone with a command prompt and want to know what version of the OS you are running.

Log in to your Bone and enter the following command:

[basics_latest_os] shows how to open the ID.txt file to see the OS version. The /etc/dogtag file has the same contents and is easier to find if you already have a command prompt. See [basics_install_os] if you need to update your OS.

You want to access the BeagleBone’s graphical desktop from your host computer.

Run the installed Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server:

To connect to the Bone, you will need to run a VNC client. There are many to choose from. Remmina Remote Desktop Client is already installed on Ubuntu. Start and select the new remote desktop file button (Creating a new remote desktop file in Remmina Remote Desktop Client).

Give your connection a name, being sure to select "Remmina VNC Plugin" Also, be sure to add :1 after the server address, as shown in Configuring the Remmina Remote Desktop Client. This should match the :1 that was displayed when you started vncserver.

Click Connect to start graphical access to your Bone, as shown in The Remmina Remote Desktop Client showing the BeagleBone desktop.

There are many powerful commands to use in Linux. How do you learn about them?

Common Linux commands lists many common Linux commands.

You want to run an editor to change a file.

The Bone comes with a number of editors. The simplest to learn is nano. Just enter the following command:

You are now in nano (Editing a file with nano). You can’t move around the screen using the mouse, so use the arrow keys. The bottom two lines of the screen list some useful commands. Pressing ˄G (Ctrl-G) will display more useful commands. ˄X (Ctrl-X) exits nano and gives you the option of saving the file.

Many other text editors will run on the Bone. vi, vim, emacs, and even eclipse are all supported. See Installing Additional Packages from the Debian Package Feed to learn if your favorite is one of them.

You want to connect your Bone to the Internet using the wired network connection.

Plug one end of an Ethernet patch cable into the RJ45 connector on the Bone (see The RJ45 port on the Bone) and the other end into your home hub/router. The yellow and green link lights on both ends should begin to flash.

If your router is already configured to run DHCP (Dynamical Host Configuration Protocol), it will automatically assign an IP address to the Bone.

To find the IP address, open a terminal window and run the ip command:

My Bone is connected to the Internet in two ways: via the RJ45 connection (eth0) and via the USB cable (usb0). The inet field shows that my Internet address is 10.0.5.144 for the RJ45 connector.

On my university campus, you must register your MAC address before any device will work on the network. The HWaddr field gives the MAC address. For eth0, it’s c8:a0:30:a6:26:e8.

The IP address of your Bone can change. If it’s been assigned by DHCP, it can change at any time. The MAC address, however, never changes; it is assigned to your ethernet device when it’s manufactured.

You want BeagleBone Black to talk to the Internet using a USB wireless adapter.

For the correct instructions for the image you are using, go to latest-images and click on the image you are using.

I’m running Debian 11.x (Bullseye), the middle one.

Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see instructions on setting up Wifi. The instructions here are based on using networkctl

To make this recipe, you will need:

First, plug in the WiFi adapter and the 5 V external power supply and reboot.

Then run lsusb to ensure that your Bone found the adapter:

Next, run networkctl to find your adapter’s name. Mine is called wlan0, but you might see other names, such as ra0.

If no name appears, try ip a:

Next edit the configuration file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf.

In the file you’ll see:

Change the ssid and psk enteries for your network. Save your file, then run:

wlan0 should now have an ip address and you should be on the network. If not, try rebooting.

Your host computer is connected to the Bone via the USB cable, and you want to run the network between the two.

Establishing an Ethernet-Based Internet Connection shows how to connect BeagleBone Black to the Internet via the RJ45 Ethernet connector. This recipe shows a way to connect without using the RJ45 connector.

A network is automatically running between the Bone and the host computer at boot time using the USB. The host’s IP address is 192.168.7.1 and the Bone’s is 192.168.7.2. Although your Bone is talking to your host, it can’t reach the Internet in general, nor can the Internet reach it. On one hand, this is good, because those who are up to no good can’t access your Bone. On the other hand, your Bone can’t reach the rest of the world.

You have put your Bone on the network and want to limit which IP addresses can access it.

How-To Geek has a great posting on how do use ufw, the "uncomplicated firewall". Check out How to Secure Your Linux Server with a UFW Firewall. I’ll summarize the initial setup here.

First install and check the status:

Now turn off everything coming in and leave on all outgoing. Note, this won’t take effect until ufw is enabled.

Don’t enable yet, make sure ssh still has access

Just to be sure, you can install nmap on your host computer to see what ports are currently open.

Currently there are three ports visible: 22, 80 and 3000(visual studio code) Now turn on the firewal and see what happends.

Only port 22 (ssh) is accessable now.

The firewall will remain on, even after a reboot. Disable it now if you don’t want it on.

See the How-To Geek article for more examples.

You want to do more cool things with your BeagleBone by installing more programs.

The easiest way to install more software is to use apt:

A sudo is necessary since you aren’t running as root. The first command downloads package lists from various repositories and updates them to get information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies. (You need to run it only once a week or so.) The second command fetches the software and installs it and all packages it depends on.

How do you find out what software you can install? Try running this:

The first command lists all the packages that apt knows about and sorts them and stores them in /tmp/list. The second command shows why you want to put the list in a file. The wc command counts the number of lines, words, and characters in a file. In our case, there are over 67,000 packages from which we can choose! The less command displays the sorted list, one page at a time. Press the space bar to go to the next page. Press Q to quit.

Suppose that you would like to install an online dictionary (dict). Just run the following command:

Now you can run dict.

You’ve been playing around and installing all sorts of things with apt and now you want to clean things up a bit.

apt has a remove option, so you can run the following command:

You want to move files between the onboard flash and the microSD card.

If you booted from the microSD card, run the following command:

The df command shows what partitions are already mounted. The line /dev/mmcblk0p2 7.2G 2.0G 4.9G 29% / shows that mmcblk0 partition p2 is mounted as /, the root file system. The general rule is that the media you’re booted from (either the onboard flash or the microSD card) will appear as mmcblk0. The second partition (p2) is the root of the file system.

The ls command shows what devices are available to mount. Because mmcblk0 is already mounted, /dev/mmcblk1p1 must be the other media that we need to mount. Run the following commands to mount it:

The cd command takes us to a place in the file system where files are commonly mounted. The mkdir command creates a new directory (onboard) to be a mount point. The ls command shows there is nothing in onboard. The mount command makes the contents of the onboard flash accessible. The next ls shows there now are files in onboard. These are the contents of the onboard flash, which can be copied to and from like any other file.

This same process should also work if you have booted from the onboard flash. When you are done with the onboard flash, you can unmount it by using this command:

You are starting to run out of room on your microSD card (or onboard flash) and have removed several packages you had previously installed (Removing Packages Installed with apt), but you still need to free up more space.

To free up space, you can remove preinstalled packages or discover big files to remove.

You want to use C on the Bone to talk to the world.

The C solution isn’t as simple as the JavaScript or Python solution, but it does work and is much faster. The approach is the same, write to the /sys/class/gpio files.

Here, as with JavaScript and Python, the gpio pins are refered to by the Linux gpio number. Mapping from header pin to internal GPIO number shows how the P8 and P9 Headers numbers map to the gpio number. For this example P9_14 is used, which the table shows in gpio 50.

Compile and run the code:

Hit ^C to stop the blinking.